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The concept of vital force - the immanent energy that promotes the processes of life in the body and in nature - has proved a source of endless fascination and controversy. Indeed, the question of what vitalizes the body has haunted humanity since antiquity, and became even more pressing during the Scientific Revolution and beyond.
Examining the complexities and theories about vital force in Spanish modernity, Nicolás Fernández-Medina’s Life Embodied offers a novel and provocative assessment of the question of bodily life in Spain. Starting with Juan de Cabriada’s landmark Carta filosófica, médico-chymica of 1687 and ending with Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s avant-gardism of the 1910s, Fernández-Medina incorporates discussions of anatomy, philosophy, science, critical theory, history of medicine, and literary studies to argue that concepts of vital force served as powerful vehicles to interrogate the possibilities and limits of corporeality. Paying close attention to how the body’s capabilities were conceived and strategically woven into critiques of modernity, Fernández-Medina engages the work of Miguel Boix y Moliner, Martín Martínez, Diego de Torres Villarroel, Sebastián Guerrero Herreros, Ignacio María Ruiz de Luzuriaga, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Pedro Mata y Fontanet, Ángela Grassi, Julián Sanz del Río, Miguel de Unamuno, and Pío Baroja, among others.
Drawing on extensive research and analysis, Life Embodied breaks new ground as the first book to address the question of vital force in Spanish modernity.
"Life Embodied: The Promise of Vital Force in Spanish Modernity es una obra sumamente recomendable para todos aquellos interesados en la historia de la ciencia, la historia de la literatura, las relaciones entre filosofía, ciencia y poder, y el desarrollo
"In his fascinating diachronic interdisciplinary study of the theories of vital force in Spanish modernity, Nicolás Fernández-Medina revisits forgotten texts on vital force--"the immanent energy that promotes the processes of life and growth in the body a
"Fernández-Medina consulted an impressive number of multidisciplinary sources in tracing the concept of vital force - the immanent energy that promotes the processes of life in the body and in nature - in Spain between the 17th and the late-19th centuries
"Nicolás Fernández-Medina tackles the subject [of modernity and vital force] with exemplary rigor and dexterity, offering a comprehensive and kaleidoscopic view. His familiarity with first-tier authors is matched here with an impressive knowledge of numer
"Life Embodied examines a variety of texts – philosophical and medical treatises, poems, novels – in great detail and navigates between discussions of Hippocratism, Cartesianism, Montpellier vitalism, Romanticism, and Avant-gardism ... Life Embodied represents a major contribution to scholarship on Spanish modernity ... It is an excellent piece of scholarship." Dale Joseph Pratt, Brigham Young University